Death Race 2000

Roger Corman wanted to make a futuristic action sports film to take advantage of the advance publicity of Rollerball (1975). He optioned a short story by Ib Melchior and hired Robert Thom to adapt it. Director Paul Bartel felt this was unshootable, so Charles B. Griffith rewrote it. Corman wanted Peter Fonda to play the lead, but he read the script and said it was too ridiculous to make, so David Carradine was cast instead; Carradine wanted to take on a role that would make people think of him as more than just Caine on Kung Fu and give him a leg up on a movie career. Carradine was paid 10% of the film's gross.[3]

Bartel later recalled "We had terrible script problems; David had to finish his Kung Fu series before starting and we had bad weather. We all worked under terrible pressure. Roger and I had an essential disagreement over comedy. He took out a lot of the comedy scenes. He may have been right and was probably more objective."[1]

In a 1982 interview, Bartel said, "Most of my guilty pleasures in this film were ripped out by the roots by Roger Corman before the film ever saw the light of day and substituted with crushed heads and blood squibs. Nevertheless, there is a joke about the French wrecking our economy and telephone system that I still find amusing. And I am pleased by the scene introducing the Girl Fan (played very effectively by my sister Wendy) who is to sacrifice herself beneath the wheels of David Carradine's race car and wants to meet him so that the gesture will have 'meaning'."[6]

Shout! Factory released a Deluxe Edition DVD and Blu-ray on June 22, 2010, in Region 1/A.[7]

Previous video editions were released on VHS and DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment and New Concorde, among other studios.[8]

According to Variety, the film earned $4.8 million in rentals in the United States.[9] Another account says $5.25 million.[10]

Contemporary reviews were mixed. Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times wrote that the film had "nothing to say beyond the superficial about government or rebellion. And in the absence of such a statement, it becomes what it seems to have made fun of—a spectacle glorifying the car as an instrument of violence."[11] Variety called the film "cartoonish but effective entertainment, with some good action sequences and plenty of black humor."[12] Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the comic conceits were "too shaky to hold the movie together and tend to self-destruct some distance short of any pop allegory for America."[13] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one star out of four and wrote that it "may be the goofiest and sleaziest film I've seen in the last five years."[14] Tom Shales of The Washington Post praised the film as "one of the zippier little B pictures of the year," adding that "it is designed primarily as a spectacle of kinetic titillation, and on that level, it's a foregone smash hit."[15] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times was also positive, calling it "a fine little action picture with big ideas" and finding Carradine "terrific" in his role.[16] In a February 2021 retrospective review, James Berardinelli gave the film 1 star out of 4; he said that it was similar to present-day releases by Blumhouse in that Roger Corman also made a lot of those types of low-budget horror/exploitation films and some were/are good but most aren't, and simply summed up the 1975 film by calling it "bad."[17]

Roger Ebert gave the film zero stars in his review, deriding its violence and lamenting its appeal to small children.[18] However, during a review of The Fast and the Furious on Ebert & Roeper and the Movies, Ebert named Death Race 2000 as part of a "great tradition of summer drive-in movies" that embrace a "summer exploitation mentality in a clever way".[19] While Ebert hinted that he did not find the film as awful decades later as he did in 1975, he made it plain he would not alter or disavow his original zero-stars rating for it either.[20][21] He also gave a scathing review of the 2008 sort-of-remake Death Race.

The film has garnered critical acclaim over the years, having a score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 6.7/10, deeming it "fresh". The site's critical consensus states, "Death Race 2000 is a fun, campy classic, drawing genuine thrills from its mindless ultra-violence."[22]

The film has long been regarded as a cult hit[5] and was often viewed as superior to Rollerball, a much more expensive major studio drama released later in the same year; another dystopian science-fiction sports film similarly focusing on the use of dangerous sports as an "opiate" for the masses.[5]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2001: AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – Nominated[23]

The 1982 video game Maze Death Race for ZX81 computers (and 1983 for ZX Spectrum) resembles the film by its cover artwork, title, and car-driving content.[24]

The Carmageddon video game series borrows heavily from the plot, characters and car designs from the film Death Race 2000. The original game was supposed to be a game based on the comic series in the 1990s, but the plans were later changed.

A comic book sequel series titled Death Race 2020 was published in April–November 1995 by Roger Corman's short-lived Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics imprint. It was written by Pat Mills of 2000 AD fame, with art by Kevin O'Neill (and additional art by Trevor Goring). Mills and O'Neill had already worked together on several comics, including Marshal Law. The comic book series, as the title indicates, takes place 20 years after the film ended and deals with Frankenstein's return to the race. New racers introduced here included Von Dutch, the Alcoholic, Happy the Clown, Steppenwolf, Rick Rhesus, and Harry Carrie.

The comic book series lasted eight issues before being canceled and the story was left unfinished at the end.

Paul W. S. Anderson directed a remake entitled Death Race, which was released August 22, 2008, starring Jason Statham. The remake began production in late August 2007.[25] Besides Statham, this new version also stars Ian McShane, Joan Allen, and Tyrese Gibson.[26] It also includes a cameo (by voice-over) of David Carradine, reprising his role of Frankenstein. Two direct-to-DVD prequels, titled Death Race 2 (2010) and Death Race 3: Inferno (2013), starring Luke Goss, Tanit Phoenix, Danny Trejo and Ving Rhames, and a direct-to-DVD sequel, titled Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018), were also produced.

An official sequel film to the original film, Death Race 2050, was produced by Roger Corman[27] and released in early 2017.[28]

• At the beginning of the song "Isle of Dead" by Buckethead, a short excerpt from the film can be heard.
• In the 1992 Roger Corman-produced film Munchie Strikes Back, clips from the film (including the helicopter chase) are used as part of a video game called Death Race 2000.
• The Alex Jones Show frequently uses the audio of the scene where Harold explains the scoring system as a bumper. The program also airs similar bumpers, which feature clips from other dystopian films such as Soylent Green and They Live.
• The intro to the song "In The Last Second" by Jumpsteady features clips from Machine Gun Joe's first kill in the film.
• Samples from the movie feature heavily in the Bomb the Bass 1991 song "Dune Buggy Attack 1991".